From the Study of “Folk Culture” to the Study of (Socialist) “Everyday Culture”: An Undesired Tradition? Cover Image

‘Народна култура’ – (социалистическа) ‘всекидневна’ култура: един нежелан научен преход?
From the Study of “Folk Culture” to the Study of (Socialist) “Everyday Culture”: An Undesired Tradition?

Author(s): Klaus Roth
Subject(s): Anthropology
Published by: Институт за етнология и фолклористика с Етнографски музей при БАН

Summary/Abstract: The terms ‘folk’ and ‘folk culture’, key concepts of the ethnological sciences since the 19th century, have ambivalent meanings and they were often charged with ideological content and misused for political purposes. In the Volkskunde of German speaking countries, the term ‘folk culture’ was therefore replaced by ‘everyday culture’ around 1970. Although ‘everyday life’ and ‘everyday culture’ were was also ambivalent, as Norbert Elias demonstrated, and were conceptualized differently e.g. by phenomenologist and Marxist scholars, they nevertheless proved to be very useful and fruitful concepts for ethnological and folkloristic research. In the socialist countries, there was almost no research into contemporary everyday culture, as the concept did not fit in the Marxist dichotomy of ‘basis’ and ‘superstructure’ and actual social practice differed largely from the ideological goal of creating a ‘socialist way of life’ for ‘new socialist personalities’. As a result, ethnography and folklore continued mostly to study traditional peasant folk cultures. In the post-socialist period, the lack of ethnological interest in the actual everyday life and culture of the people continues for a number of reasons, some of them related to the social and economic consequences of transformation. This is true especially for the study of the everyday culture in the socialist period, i.e., the forms of behaviour and thinking bred by ‘real socialism’, the defensive strategies people developed and internalized in the course of decades in order to manage their everyday lives. This legacy of socialism may be the heaviest one for the development of new political, economic, and socio-cultural structures in the post-socialist countries. Ethnology, folklore and cultural anthropology should elucidate the “nature of socialist everyday life, its practical contexts, and its ground rules” (Bertaux 1994) in order to better understand its long-term effects on the structures of present everyday life.

  • Issue Year: 2001
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 5-18
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: Bulgarian